Amory Houghton: “one of the advantages of old age is not necessarily wisdom but a lot of experience, and I do not pretend to try to…”

“one of the advantages of old age is not necessarily wisdom but a lot of experience, and I do not pretend to try to convince those who are already convinced of their position. I just want to say how I feel about this particular issue. I am very strongly in favor of permanent normal trading relations with China, and I will say why. I have found, in my experience, that for every job that goes overseas that there are two jobs that are created in this country. One can say 850,000 have left. I do not know what the number is, but I bet many fold have come back into this country. That has been my experience. One does not send a job abroad to make a product primarily to send back into the United States. Sometimes that happens, but it is mostly to take care of that market. Secondly, we are not standing here making a decision in isolation. There are other people out there who do not want us to have this agreement. They want us to stay absolutely still in the water so their businesses, whether it is the South Koreans or the Germans or the Japanese, can get in there and take the lead on this, and once one has been in business there, in established relationships, it is very difficult to get in. Lastly, from a very practical standpoint, I have set up about four plants in China, and the experience which we have had has been we have moved in, we have given people dignity, good paying jobs, benefits.”